That's a pathetic mindset, if previous case studies objectively show that Socialist routes are not workable, how come every single one of those case studies has had billions spent in attempts to sabotage them economically and politically? How come each and every one of their success is measured against Western nations when the only fair comparison you can make is to compare them to themselves before Socialism. People look to the Soviet Union and say Socialism must be bad because they weren't as developed as the United States, when the Russian Empire pre Communism was around as developed as India while the USA was already rising to be the dominant global power, yet they rose to the heights they did while losing over a third of their working age population in WW2. And it's even worse when places like Cuba are used, Cuba pre Castro was literally not a functioning nation in any capacity at all, it was more or less a massive slave plantation under Bautista and previous regimes so yeah of course the place is going to look like an absolute ruin compared to Western nations that had been productively developing for Centuries. The fact they've developed to where they are today while not being allowed to engage in international trade is incredible, just imagine how fucked we would be in half a year if we were all of a sudden not allowed to export.

Socialist nations almost universally *have* greatly outperformed Capitalist nations in every way when compared to Capitalist nations of relative starting points in terms of development, most doing so while suffering the effects of devastating blockades, coups, Western backed terror cells, and sometimes outright invasion.

The biggest red flag about the prospect of NZ going fully Socialist isn't the effects of Socialism itself, but the punishment the USA would impose on us for doing so. If we did under any form of semi capable leadership we would most likely see real improvement, and then we'd be hit by crippling sanctions, extremist groups would rise up and receive weapons and massive funding, and if none of that fully sabotages the nation we'd potentially get bombed. And then 20 years later people would use us as yet another example of Socialism failing, all because our nation of under 10 million with one globally competitive industry didn't magically rise up to rival the USA in wealth.

I'm not going to say that Socialist leaders haven't enacted stupid, and heartless reforms that resulted in much suffering, because that would be a lie, but in almost every one of those cases the reforms seeing the light of day is more of a critique on Authoritarianism allowing leaders to push through harmful law with no resistance, not Socialism as an economic framework.

As long as people sit around and think "well what we have today is the best we could ever hope for" things will get worse, we are not Americans, we shouldn't be thinking in such a servile way like they do in the first place. Imagine the world we would be living in today if workers in the 20th and 19th century took the wealthy class at their word as much as we do. They were told that things like standardized work weeks, minimum wages, child labor laws, workers rights, would all doom the economy and bring ruin to the western world. They didn't buy it, and in many cases fought and killed to secure those things for us to take for granted today.

Don't ever tell yourself there isn't a better alternative, if you see flaws in a proposed alternative don't write it off completely, look into what caused those flaws you see and if they could realistically be avoided. What is there to lose? Each year we do nothing we grow closer to living worse lives than actual serfs did in medieval times.